


Broken Bonds and Reforged Ones

by Terion



Series: The Vampires of Bigby Fork [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Fictional Town, Original Vampires, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 03:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terion/pseuds/Terion
Summary: In 1954, Darien O'Connell helped the FBI solve a huge mass-murder case in a Mississippi town, one that was stumping everyone in the state as well as terrifying them in its brutality. Normally that would be the end of the story...but Darien O'Connell isn't anywhere close to being a normal man. He's a vampire and where he goes, trouble tends to follow along not too far behind.





	Broken Bonds and Reforged Ones

**Author's Note:**

> Playing Vampyr recently got me hella inspired but since my brain hasn't given me a plot to go along with inspiration to write some for my new favorite doctor vampire, I decided to branch back into my own vampires and write some drabbles with them.

_ Eastridge Apartments _

_ Bigby Fork, MS _

_ October, 1954 _

* * *

 

There’s some habits that you can’t break.

Like how you say some words or your first immediate response to some event.

For me, every redhead I see brings an apology to my lips...before I remember they’re not her and never will be.

And, unfortunately, some small part of me wants to go home whenever something goes wrong. Not home to Ireland, not back to that old farm that’s probably either no longer there or just a ruin by now.

No, there’s a part of me that wants to go back to my sire when shit goes wrong. Unfortunately that bond is a truth that I can’t run from no matter how much I might want to. It’s a bloodstained thread that ties me back to her and as much as I hate her for what she made me...she’s my sire. She’s the only mother I’ve got left.

Of course, I never  _ have _ gone running back to her. My anger’s never let me get very far whenever I do feel like running in that direction. That’s never been a problem though.

Ebio knows where to find me.

I don’t  _ have  _ to run to her because  _ she  _ comes to me.

“Oh, pet,” she whispered, her voice soft and soothing. Ebio is old enough that she long ago lost any trace of her original accent, except when she speaks the old Egyptian tongue from her day. Her fingers card into my hair, unflinchingly brushing through parts matted by blood, and over the open gash at my hairline. “What did you get into now?”

“Serial killer,” I replied, closing my eyes as I leaned into the gentle touch. I didn’t even question how she’d gotten into my apartment. She had already been ancient when she had turned me and she was older still now. “Brained me with a crowbar.”

Fuck, I hated her. Every inch of me loathed her and what she had done to me so many centuries before. Nearly two hundred years after leaving her side out of anger hadn’t dulled it an inch…but the bond always negated my feelings. Dulled them down to an errant prickle of a reminder that they existed. Especially since she always showed up whenever I was wounded and therefore compromised. So I always, fucking  _ always _ , gravitated to her for comfort whenever she appeared and she knew it.

Ebio gave a little cluck of her tongue then her other hand joined the first, fingertips inspecting the gash with a clinical precision. “A wound that would have taken a mortal life,” she noted mildly. “Or yours perhaps if your killer had been more than a mere mortal.”

“Lucky me.”

Her hand was abruptly on my chin then, grip firm as she forced me to tilt me head back and around towards her. She didn’t have to give a command for me to open my eyes, I did it anyway as soon as I felt the full force of her gaze.

To any distant mortal gaze, she was an unassuming woman of obvious Egyptian descent in her mid twenties. Her features were a little...rougher...than those of modern times from that area of the world but that wasn’t what was striking about Ebio. No, that was her obvious fierceness, worn about her like a cloak. A sense of danger that was palpable and obvious even to the most oblivious mortal.

To my eyes, she was a terror. She was the monster who had stolen my life from me in more ways than one. The reason behind all of my nightmares. And some small part of me  _ loved her _ .

What was the line by Galadriel in Lord of the Rings? Oh,  _ you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! _ That was Ebio. She was like the old Irish war goddesses, beautiful and terrible and bringing destruction in her wake like a storm.

Ebio’s dark gaze flicked over my face and then she sighed. “You’ve let yourself slip, my son,” she noted softly. “Your killer should never have been able to hurt you so.”

A sneer curled my lip and I snapped back, “What do you care if I slip? I’m the disgraced son anyway. The one that everyone whispers about as the failure to our kind.”

Her fingers tightened on my chin and I blinked as I watched her lower lip tremble.  _ Tremble _ . I had never in my life seen such a display from her. Ebio was untouchable by emotion...or so I’d thought.

“You think me so cold, child?” she asked softly. “To no longer care for my own?”

“Isn’t that what everyone says you should do?”

At that Ebio smirked.

“And when, my son, have I ever let what I do be ruled by the silly whims of others?”

The answer was never. Ebio was not someone who was pushed around. Not even by her own sire, who was one of the Six, one of the eldest besides our First.

“Now,” she said immediately, “where is thread and a needle? This wound should be closed so you may heal quicker. We do not want more of your precious mortals in on your secret.”

More stunned than anything (especially at how she knew that  _ anyone  _ knew, let alone Arthur and Penny), I just pointed towards the bathroom of the shitty apartment I’d had since moving to Bigby Fork for work. Arthur and the other agents had more decent lodgings in town but I’d ended up with something cheaper as mere consultant. Fine by me though. Less reputable living space meant less people asking questions about weird shit.

Ebio made her way to the bathroom and as I heard her digging around I wondered what her ploy was this time. I always thought it was a game to her, to barge back into my life every so often when I was at my lowest. As if she could extend a seemingly kind hand and bring me back into the family.

Not that the family was together anymore anyway.

I kept tabs on them through my own sources, so I knew full well that she’d been alone for a long time now.

So what was her game this time?

When she came back, coiling a length of thread around one finger with the needle held between her teeth, I sat up straight on the threadbare couch and asked, “Why are you here, Ebio?”

She was silent for a moment, her eyes focused on her task, and then she let out a little huff of breath. Taking the needle from her mouth, she used her teeth to tear the thread before tossing the remainder of the spool onto the couch next to me. As she threaded the needle, Ebio replied, “To take care of my son. Lighter?”

Scowling up at her, I fished in the pocket of my pants and came up with a lighter that had been a gift from Arthur when I’d officially joined the Bureau as a consultant. As I handed it over, I commented, “You don’t have to sterilize it.”

“If one is going to do something,” she replied sharply as she ran the flame over the needle, “one should do it correctly. Even if it is a mostly useless gesture.” She then flicked the lighter closed, tossing it back to me, and ran her fingers along the needle before stepping close again. I instantly stiffened at her close proximity but she made no comment on that.

No, she just moved in close and placed her hand on my head, pinching shut the edges of the wound and beginning her work. I flinched slightly at every little insertion of the needle at first until the pain just became...normal. Pain was a normal part of my life anyway and had been for the past two centuries.

Some of it my own fault.

A lot more of it hers.

And yet...as she worked...I found myself leaning into her touch.

By the time she was done, I was leaning forward with my nose pressed against her belly and my fingers loosely wrapped around the back of her knees. When Ebio rested her forearms on my shoulders, her fingers curling in my hair, I let out a low breath and said three words.

“I hate you.”

Her fingers did not still at the words and she did not stiffen.

No, she merely let out a breath and stated a simple, “I know, my son.”

I closed my eyes and wanted, God, I wanted to pull away but I didn’t. Because Lord help me -  _ if _ He exists and would even help a wretched creature like me - I found some kind of comfort in her touch. It had been a long time since I’d been held like this by someone who wasn’t a temporary lover. And I  _ craved  _ touch.

“Why are you here?” I asked again, tightening the grip of my thumbs around her kneecaps. “Why are you doing this? You’ve never cared before, Ebio, so why now? Is this just another game?”

Silence answered me for a long moment and then she breathed, “It has never been a game, child.”

I let out a long, low laugh, and asked, “What’s this been then? All these years of barging into my life over and over?”

“How else can I see you, Darien, when you run from me otherwise?”

My own name from her lips made me go still and I forced myself to straighten up, drawing myself away from her so I could look up at her face. I’ve been a lot of things since I left her side in 1770. Carpenter, mason, firefighter, and a cop before I ended up an FBI informant. I’d learned something as all of them but my stint as a cop had taught me how to notice a lot more details than I had previously.

And as I looked up at her, every instinct I had was screaming at me that she was  _ honest _ .

And, God help me, her expression was one that I knew. That I  _ remembered _ .

I remembered my mother looking at me like that.

It was a dim memory, tarnished by too many centuries and the failings of memory (even our kind forget, we’d go insane otherwise), but I remembered. It was one of those things that the eleven year-old boy I’d been once had held onto like a dying ember after she had disappeared. That last time that I saw my mother’s smile.

And there it was, on the face of the woman I both hated and loved. The woman I was bound to by a different kind of blood bond.

Ebio tilted her head slightly and then she leaned down, pressing her lips against the edges of the wound she had just stitched up. “You are a fool child, Darien Ó Conaill,” she murmured, “but I have always cared for your fate in this world.”

Stunned, I clutched at the back of her knees and then breathed, “I  _ betrayed you _ , Ebio. I tried to  _ kill you _ .”

“And I knew that one day you might remember and do such a thing.” As she straightened up, both of her hands cupping my face and, for once, I didn’t jerk away. “If it would have made you better, I would have let you take my life in that fight.”

_ What? _

“But…”

“Trjónn had no right to intervene in what was ours,” Ebio continued sharply. “Had no right to intervene in my judgement of how to proceed in retaining your sanity.”

I choked out a laugh at that. “My  _ sanity _ ? I lost  _ that _ the first time I killed.”

“I speak not of  _ mortal _ sanity, child.”

Her tone was clipped and short and to the point and I knew instantly what she meant. I’d always known that there was a lot of what our kind deemed the Primal inside of me. It made me more bloodthirsty, made me a more vicious killer, made me  _ enjoy it _ . And if you give into the Primal too much, if you let yourself  _ drown _ beneath it, you go rogue.

And then you die. They hunt you down and they take your life before you can glut yourself like a wild animal on blood over and over again, a threat to not only the mortals but our own kind.

“You...you would have let me kill you.”

“If I had thought it would be a boon.”

“I don’t believe you,” I stated.

Ebio just smiled and shrugged, stroking her thumbs across my cheeks. “It matters not whether you believe me now, my child. Such was so long ago now. What should be known is that I have always cared for your health and safety.”

I honestly didn’t know if I could believe her.

Too many years of thinking she was screwing with me.

Too many years of lies.

Too many years of blood.

“I can’t trust you,” I whispered, my voice sounding broken despite my best effort not to. Yet I couldn’t help it. She was my  _ sire _ . Everything in me said I was  _ supposed _ to trust her. That bond between us twanged like a guitar with its strings out of tune, full of sour notes and broken chords.

She just sighed in return. Her head nodded sadly and she softly stated, “Perhaps one day, my son. Until then…” Ebio’s voice trailed off and I blinked up at her as she leaned down again to press a kiss against the center of my forehead. “...try to be safe.”

And then...she was gone.

I felt the start of her leaving since her lips and hands were still on my face but after they left...nothing. There wasn't even the sound of her footsteps on the floor or the door (or window, since that might have been how she entered). She moved so fast and so silently that she was like a ghost.

Another reason to fear her. She could take me in a fight, I'd always known that, and the me of the past had always respected her strength and power. Back when I had had close to the same level of power, back when I had been a  _ monster _ too.

All of that power...yet she had said she would have let me win that fight. I had known all those years ago when I had confronted her that she could have swatted me like an errant gnat. Back then I had been uncontrolled, shaky in my abilities like a newborn colt because it had been the first time  _ I  _ had used them.  _ Me _ , not the monster that had been in my place for so many years. And I hadn't  _ wanted _ to use them, hadn’t wanted to use any of the blood driven power that I'd had then.

Slowly I reached up to touch the edges of the wound, feeling carefully over her stitches. They were perfect, the obvious work of a professional. I wanted to tear them out, to refuse her help...but I didn't. I merely sighed and leaned back on the couch, tipping my head back to rest against the top of the back.

God, I was  _ tired _ .

Tired of death.

Tired of running.

Tired of...everything.

An abrupt knock at the door of the apartment had me jumping and I grunted as I levered myself to my feet. Only a few people knew I was occupying this particular apartment, so it was either Arthur or Penny since the other FBI agents didn't have much to do with me.

Not bothering with the peephole, I pulled open the door and leaned against the frame while peering out at my visitor. Penny Goodwyn stood there, nervously fiddling with the hem of her light jacket, and looking so out of place in front of the cheap apartments.

“Hi,” I greeted, surprised to see her. She'd found out what I was earlier tonight when we’d finally hunted down the killer. I'd  _ had _ to use the abilities what I was gave me in order to track him and there hadn't been time to hide it.

I might be  _ weak _ now compared to what I used to be but I was still a good leap above typical human abilities.

“Hi,” she replied. Her eyes flicked up to the gash on my forehead and she took a step forward, one hand automatically reaching up towards the wound. She stalled halfway there, as if remembering suddenly that things weren't the same as they had been, and then asked, “May I?”

I just nodded and she started moving again. Her fingertips were cool from the crisp fall air and I closed my eyes as they touched the edges of the wound. It wasn't a knowing, clinical touch like Ebio’s has been but more...curious.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, her voice soft.

Shrugging, I replied, “Not so much. You...you get used to pain in a life like mine.” She frowned at that reply, a little wrinkle forming between her brows, and I took a leap. “It's chilly, Penn. You want to come in?”

She hesitated in replying, her hand stiffening up, and that was enough of a response to tell me a lot of things. Like how  _ wary _ she was now.

Gone was that easy comfort we’d been growing between us the whole time I'd been in town.

And then...she surprised me.

Penny took a deep breath as she lowered her hand and said, “I do.” Then she frowned, looking away nervously, before saying, “On one condition.”

“Anything,” I replied and meant it.

“Tell me everything.”

I blinked.

“Everything?”

Nodding, she replied, “About this. About you.”

“You...you want to know.”

“I want to know what I'm getting into.”

My heart jumped and I impulsively reached out for her hand, stalling myself at the last minute so a grab just turned into my fingers brushing the back of her hand. “Penn,” I breathed, “are you…?”

She huffed out a breath and gave me a stern look, snapping, “I'm giving you  _ one chance _ , O'Connell. This is... _ crazy _ ...but I like you. This doesn't change that. But if,  _ if _ , we do this, I want to know what I'm getting into.”

Did I dare?

Was it worth it?

To invite someone in like she was asking?

To reveal not only all the details of what I was but what I had  _ done _ ? Of the monster I had been? That I remembered all too clearly being?

“It's not...it's not pretty, Penn.”

All of that nervousness instantly snapped out of her and she asked in a stern voice, “You think I can't take it?”

I shook my head and this time I finished reaching for her hand, curling my fingers tightly into hers. “No,” I replied honestly. “Hell no. You're...you're a woman who knows what she wants. And you have never flinched away from a problem since I met you.”

“But this isn't just one thing, Penn. This is…”

“It's what?” she asked as she locked her fingers with my own.

For a moment I just blinked, looking at her hand in mine, willingly  _ there _ , and replied in a whisper, “I...I killed a lot of people once upon a time. The person I was then took  _ pleasure _ in it. That's a part of me that I can't get rid of.”

“How long ago?”

“What?”

Penny just looked at me like I was a foolish child and repeated, “How long since you did that?”

“1770 was the last year of it..”

“17...70?”

I managed a laugh at her stunned tone and stated, “I did say I was a lot older than I looked when we met.”

She let out a choked laugh at that, shaking her head, then asked, “You gonna invite me in again, O’Connell?”

A dumb, silly grin stretched my mouth far too wide at her reply and I gently drew her inside, closing the door behind her. As soon as she was inside, I cautiously pulled her into a hug and let out a deep breath when she wrapped her arms around me in return. Dropping my head exhaustedly to her shoulder, I breathed, “Thank you.”

Her trust...was a  _ gift _ .

I didn't know how long it might last, especially after she knew more, but I would take it while I could.

“You're welcome, O’Connell.”

“Ó Conaill,” I sighed as I straightened up, looking down at her. “When I was born it was still Ó Conaill, at least privately in the family. That's your first tidbit of information.”

Penny blinked then asked, “And you were born in?”

“1642 in County Kerry. Right around the beginning of the Eleven Years’ War. We had a little farm outside of Killarney proper.”

“We?”

I just sighed and nodded.

“My family. I suppose...I suppose it’s best to start with them, isn’t it?”

It would bring up bad memories...but my mother’s memory was already at the forefront thanks to Ebio’s visit. What harm could come by adding my revolt against my father and the abandonment of my younger brother to it? The guilt of my actions already followed me every day.

Nodding, Penny took my hands in her own and led me across my own apartment, back to the threadbare couch. She sat down and gently pulled me down with her and I bowed my head for a moment before I looked at her curiously again.

“If I start this,” I stated softly, “I won’t stop until I’m done. So long as you’re willing to listen. But if it becomes too much...if what I tell you is more than you can handle...tell me.” Squeezing her hands, I went on, “If you think me a monster after,  _ tell me _ . And if you never want to see me again, I will never set foot in this town again.”

“I won’t think you’re…” she began but I swiftly lifted a hand to stop her words, fingers trembling against her lips. Her blue eyes were wide - not terrified, just shocked, probably at how quickly I’d moved - and I shook my head.

“ _ Don’t _ . Don’t say that you won’t when you don’t yet know.”

Penny blinked and then she raised a hand, curling her fingers around my own and bringing our joined hands back to into her lap. “Tell me then,” she said gently. “And we’ll see.”

I closed my eyes at that, thought out a silent prayer...and then…

I began at the beginning.


End file.
